Somalia Archives - Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Didja hear? Omigod. Minnesota’s Tim Walz, everyone’s favorite Failed Vice Presidential Candidate and sympathizer with the Chinese Communist Party, is not running for reelection — he no longer seeks to serve as one of the top three worst governors ever.

In his whiny announcement, Governor Walz verged on apoplexy. “Those bumbling Somali fraudsters screwed everything up! The optics have gone to @#$%&!; citizen journalist, my [insert alternative grawlix here]! And Trump is mean!” Look, if you don’t believe me, I’ll fax you the transcript.

OK. I may be paraphrasing.

But I’m close. Associated Press reports his bitter comments on why the jig is up. Walz is waltzing out of the campaign because he can’t give it “my all” because of the “extraordinarily difficult year for our state” because of the latest revelations of how crappily and dishonestly he functioned as governor.

Walz said: “Donald Trump and his allies — in Washington, in St. Paul, and online — want to make our state a colder, meaner place.” These baddies “want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors . . . want to take away much of what makes Minnesota the best place in America to raise a family.”

All very elusively allusive. What could Senor Real Man possibly be talking about? Why would any Minnesotan — say, an honest taxpayer — want to attack another Minnesotan — say, someone living high off the hog on the taxpayer dime, effectively taking money from the mouths of babes? Or a dishonest politician cooperating with and benefiting from just such massive taxpayer-funded fraud?

Don’t run, Walz. Don’t run. Stay right where you are.

So that prosecutors can find you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Red-Flagged Welfare Fraud

“Staggering in its scale and brazenness.”

That’s how The New York Times describes the more than $1 billion in fraud that “took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.”

Quite a lucrative business model: Stealing from programs to prevent homelessness and keep children fed during the pandemic, the crooks instead “spent the funds on luxury cars, houses and even real estate projects abroad.”

So far, prosecutors have convicted 59 people, with “all but eight of the 86 people charged” of “Somali ancestry.”

According to Ryan Pacyga, an attorney representing several defendants, The Times reports that “some involved became convinced that state agencies were tolerating, if not tacitly allowing, the fraud.”

What?

“No one was doing anything about the red flags,” argues Pacyga. “It was like someone was stealing money from the cookie jar and they kept refilling it.”

Why was nothing done?

Well . . . the federal prosecutor contends that what The Times calls “race sensitivities” (read: fear of being called racist) were “a huge part of the problem.”

One former fraud investigator, a Somali American named Kayseh Magan, blames “the state’s Democratic-led administration” which was “reluctant to take more assertive action in response to allegations in the Somali community.”

“There is a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community,” Magan explains, “which is a core voting bloc.”

For Democrats.

Very expensive votes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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